"The crowd, sir," said the servant. And he drew aside the curtain across the glass in one of the inside pair of great double doors of the palace entrance. "It's quite safe to look, sir. They can't see through the outside doors as far as this."
Dumont peered through the bronze fretwork. A closely packed mass of people was choking the sidewalk and street—his brougham was like an island in a troubled lake. He saw several policemen—they were trying to move the crowd on, but not trying sincerely. He saw three huge cameras, their operators under the black cloths, their lenses pointed at the door—waiting for him to appear. For the first time in his life he completely lost his nerve. Not only publicity, the paper—a lifeless sheet of print; but also publicity, the public—with living eyes to peer and living voices to jeer. He looked helplessly, appealingly at the "cur" he had itched to kick the moment before.
"What the devil shall I do?" he asked in a voice without a trace of courage.
"I don't know, sir," replied the servant. "The basement door wouldn't help very much, would it?"
The basement door was in front also. "Idiot! Is there no way out at the rear?" he asked.
"Only over the fences, sir," said the servant, perfectly matter-of-fact. Having no imagination, his mind made no picture of the great captain of industry scrambling over back fences like a stray cat flying from a brick.
Dumont turned back and into his first-floor sitting-room. He unlocked his stand of brandy bottles, poured out an enormous drink and gulped it down. His stomach reeled, then his head. He went to the window and looked out—there must have been five hundred people in the street, and vehicles were making their way slowly and with difficulty, drivers gaping at the house and joking with the crowd; newsboys, bent sidewise to balance their huge bundles of papers, were darting in and out, and even through the thick plate glass he could hear: "All about Millionaire Dumont's disgrace!"
He went through to a rear window. No, there was a continuous wall, a high brick wall. A servant came and told him he was wanted at the telephone. It was Giddings, who said in a voice that was striving in vain to be calm against the pressure of some intense excitement: "You are coming down to-day, Mr. Dumont?"
"Why?" asked Dumont, snapping the word out as short and savage as the crack of a lash.
"There are disquieting rumors of a raid on us."